I’ve been thinking a lot about HDR in the last three years, not only as a colorist who’s also taken it upon myself to try and explain why this new development is so exciting to a wider audience, but as a director who’s done three projects intended for HDR mastering who’s keen to make sure that what’s done on set gives the most efficient starting point for the eventual HDR grade. As I’ve spoken to folks about HDR, I’ve always tried to make clear that one of the things I like about how this new display technology is rolling out is that there are no rules for how it’s used.
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A LUT is like a music loop or sample within a song, it can contribute to a grade, but it shouldn’t BE the grade. Automatic correction is like autotune, it can solve problems, but it shouldn’t be the main flavor of your grade. Plugins are like audio effects, a bit can give music texture, but too much makes it look like you’re concealing problems. If you want to practice grading as an art, and I do mean practice, you have to really…
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UPDATE July 2nd 2018 I’ve been told by those who would know that the anomaly discussed by part of this article has been addressed in a recent version of FCP X. It’s taken me a while to get back to this, but in my latest batch of tests, it would appear that, in Rec.709 mode, FCPX 10.4.3 has solved the issue and the color wheel controls act as I’d expect. In Wide Gamut mode with Rec.2020 color space, these controls…
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Given the news of the day, it would seem that there’s a vast swath of men in the film and television industry who’ve not gotten the memo that sexual harassment and assault is not an acceptable way of interacting with women. However, it’s occurred to me that perhaps it might be helpful to couch some helpful advice to would-be harassers in a way that someone familiar with the entertainment industry might understand. Paraphrasing the advice of too many other folks…
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After seeing Blade Runner 2049, and reading reactions and reviews afterward, it seems to me that opinion varies, in part, based on on whether one believes the themes raised by a movie need only begin a conversation, or must of necessity conclude it. I found the film to be an enjoyably contemplative experience (a rarity at its budget), and I also found the world building compelling. While dystopias seem to be a dime-a-dozen these days, I thought the extrapolation…
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Over the years I’ve periodically dipped my toe into the waters of discussing the “business” of filmmaking; a topic I am, so far at least, fairly lousy at (at least from the perspective of profit). Frankly, as a filmmaker it’s all I can do to break even at the moment, and my go-to joke is that I make money doing and describing post-production so I can lose it doing production. However, as the odd duck who both works in post and produces original work,…
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Now that the new DaVinci Resolve panels are announced, I wanted to weigh in on a few of my own observations, as I’ve been hands-on with them for a little while. All the normal caveats, take what I say with the appropriate grain of salt since I work with DaVinci and I’m obviously biased. In a nutshell? I think they’re really nice. But here are some specifics. The layout is, in my opinion, well thought out. I especially like that the bottom…
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It’s come to my attention that a lot of folks who are considering using Resolve for Editing are having trouble finding the commands they need, which leads them to wonder if Resolve even HAS those commands. Other than recommending a thorough read of the editing chapters I’ve painstakingly written over the years, the following movie has a nice tip for searching through the many commands Resolve provides. Resolve’s capabilities are deeper than you might think, and this will hopefully help you explore what can be done more widely.
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High Dynamic Range (HDR) video describes an emerging group of monitoring, video encoding, and distribution technologies designed to enable a new generation of television displays to play video capable of intensely bright highlights and increased maximum saturation. I’ve been keen on this technology ever since I first saw demonstrations at the 2015 NAB conference, and I’ve had the good fortune to sit with some excellent colorists who’ve been grading HDR projects to see what they’ve been doing with it. I’ve also managed to…
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It all started with me wanting to analyze the color of some out-of-calibration projectors with potentially aged bulbs in order to see if I could create a “poorly calibrated projector” LUT to more closely examine the effects of poor projector quality on a graded image. Why is a tale for another time; suffice it to say, it’s a research project. I have a Klein K-10 Colorimeter which I was originally intending to use for the project, but while discussing my plan with…
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Here’s an important tip when using “Optimized Media” in DaVinci Resolve to spare yourself the processing overhead of debayering raw media. This same tip also works for avoiding highlight clipping when you use the render cache. For those of you who don’t know, you can right-click a selection of clips in the Media Pool that are in one or more formats that are processor intensive to work with (camera raw clips, H.264, other intensive-to-decode media types), and choose “Generate Optimized Media” to have…
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This is it. After two years of production and post-production, and a year traveling on the film festival circuit, I can finally release my Science Fiction short “The Place Where You Live” free on the web to the general public, available both on both YouTube and Vimeo. It’s been a long time coming. While the shoot itself went fairly quickly, with two-and-a-half days of principal photography, and another day of pickups a year later, post-production took a good long time for…
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DaVinci ResolveFilmmakingSoftware
Having Fun With Post – Grading, Compositing, and Editing in Resolve
by alexisThe shoot for my goofy little rant, “The Importance of Color Correction,” came on the heels of some promos that Steve Martin wanted me to record for my newest Ripple Training titles for DaVinci Resolve 12. I figured, since I’m there on a stage, why not have a bit of fun with it? A confession – I suffer from incurable impatience between a shoot and the beginning of the cut, so once home I immediately fired up Resolve 12 and got to work. I…
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I suspect you know what I’m going to say, but on the premise that it’s how you say it…
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Ripple Training has posted some free new features videos I’ve made on the “DaVinci Resolve in Under 5 Minutes” section of their YouTube channel. Two came out today, and there are more to come covering both editing and grading features in the public beta of DaVinci Resolve 12. The first of this week’s pair of new videos cover the new Smooth Cut transition in the Edit page, for eliminating “ums,” stutters, and other speech disfluencies, and patching up the hole. This feature’s…